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Elephants & World War I

I never think of the circus as a particularly topical venue. I mean, a dancing bear is a dancing bear no matter what era it is; the man on the flying trapeze isn’t going to be lecturing my children on his liberal values anytime soon; and, unless we’re listening to Billy Joel, the clowns aren’t Communists.

But there was a time, my friends, when this was just not so.

Yes, these are two examples, from competing circuses, of War Elephants.

What exactly was the purpose of a WWI-themed elephant act, you ask? Well, supposedly, according all all the circus books laid out before me, they did it for moral.

Frankly, if daddy is off fighting in Europe, the last thing I want to take my kid to see is a routine in which an elephant acts out his job. I just feel like that’s gonna make things a bit more difficult to explain when daddy comes out without a leg.

Also, and this is obviously just my withdrawal talking, but did anyone else think that the two elephants passed out in either poster were just flat-out drunk and not, you know, fatally wounded? The Medical Corps elephant handing them bottles of what I can only presume to be rum (“medicine”) aren’t really helping matters any. In which case, these posters just became way more accurate in terms of what daddy is probably doing abroad.

Overall, I feel we’ve been gypped as of late in terms of political elephant acts in the media. All my generation has is Operation Dumbo Drop, which is never a good example of anything, let alone elephant-war relations.

I suggest writing your congressman and demanding that elephants be brought back into the political entertainment sphere.